‘It’s right to open up, but let’s get test time down’
AN infectious disease expert has said he is happy with Ireland’s roadmap to reopen the country but that we still need to get our testing to a one-day turnaround.
Professor Sam McConkey told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘I am very happy that we can now get back and live our lives in a more full way than before.
‘We all need to get out, live well, think out what we value and what we live for in our heads and then to live it well and to the full with our speech and our actions.’
The head of the Department of International Health and Tropical Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, said that while the risk of catching Covid-19 in the community was very low, it is up to us the keep it that way while living our lives. He said: ‘The rates of unexpected, unexplained community transmission in Ireland is now down about the “one-in-a-million level” each day.
‘This is a really great outcome at this time for those of us on this island. The challenge now is for us to keep the rates at those low levels, and to live our lives to the full at the same time.
‘We need same-day testing of the swab for SARS CoV2, and same-day contact tracing for self-isolation of contacts.’
Prof. McConkey’s thoughts on testing and tracing were echoed by UCD Professor of Microbial Diseases Paddy Mallon earlier this week in his statement made before the Special Committee on Covid-19 response. He told the committee: ‘The regime needs to have a 24-hour turnaround time to be ideal… We are there in the majority of hospitals. The turnaround time is within four to five hours and no more than 12 hours. All tests are back within 24 hours. That is where it needs to be in the community and I am not quite clear, with these different testing tracks, what the average turnaround time is or what proportion of community testing is actually picked up in 24 hours.’
To date Ireland has completed 400,000 Covid-19 tests. Case numbers are winding down which means test centres are also winding down.
We originally had nine test centres operating in the country we now have one operating in Galway with 30 staff members with the capacity to carry out 100 tests a day.
Despite our very low case numbers, our turnaround time is not yet at one day. According to Niamh O’Beirne, national lead for contact tracing and testing, the median turnaround is 1.7 days for end to end testing, that is from the point of referral to the end of contact tracing. It is 2.1 days in the community and 1.54 days in the acute sector.
When asked if a 24-hour turnaround time is possible, Ms O’Beirne said: ‘Within our current infrastructure and our process, it is not always possible to achieve that... When we are building the new longer-term operating and testing service, we will look again at our metrics and our pathways.’
A long-term end-to-end testing and contact-tracing plan, as requested by infectious disease experts, is expected to be published in August, according to deputy chief medical officer Colm Henry.
‘Keep rates at those low levels’